COMPAGNI, DINO (c. 1246–1324)
Dino Compagni was a Florentine merchant, political fi g-
ure, and chronicler. He was born into a well- established
Florentine family, embarked on a career in the cloth
industry, was inscribed in the guild of Por Santa Maria
(manufacturers of silk cloth and retail cloth dealers)
in 1269, and served repeatedly as consul of his guild
between 1282 and 1299. This was the period during
which a government based on guilds and headed by
priors and a standard-bearer of justice was established in
Florence; and Compagni, as a prominent and respected
member of a major guild, was deeply involved in these
developments. In 1282, he was one of a group of six
citizens that took the lead in establishing the guild
regime; he himself served as one of the priors in 1289
and as standard-bearer of justice in 1293. When he was
not himself in offi ce, he served regularly in a consulta-
tive capacity, advising the offi ceholders as they tried to
preserve peace and order in an increasingly turbulent
political climate. Compagni was again one of the priors
in October 1301, when factional confl ict between the
Black and White Guelfs erupted into open warfare in the
streets of Florence. Compagni and his fellow priors were
forced to resign; the Black Guelfs seized and plundered
the city; and many of the White Guelfs, including Dante
Alighieri, were forced into exile. Compagni was spared
that fate because of a law barring judicial proceedings
against certain important offi cials for a year after they
left offi ce; nevertheless, the defeat of his party meant
the end of his public career. He spent the rest of his life
as if he were an exile in his own city, tending to his
business and mulling over the events that had led to the
defeat of the White Guelfs.
The fruit of Compagni’s refl ections was a chronicle
that has ensured his fame ever since its rediscovery in
the seventeenth century. In contrast to most medieval
chronicles, which tend to be formless compilations of
miscellaneous information, Compagni’s is a tightly
focused, dramatic account of the factional strife that
tore at Florence between 1280 and 1312. Rather than
a daily chronicle of events, Compagni produced a
retrospective history. He wrote it between 1310, when
an expedition of Emperor Henry VII to Italy aroused
the hope that the White Guelfs would soon be restored
to power in Florence, and 1313, when that hope was
dashed by Henry’s death. Freed from the obligation to
record events as they occurred, Compagni was able to
seek causes and connections. His detailed and exact in-
formation, incisive analysis of political motivations and
alignments, and vivid portraits of such leading fi gures as
Giano della Bella and Corso Donati—and the fact that
this information comes from someone who was himself
a participant in the events—make Compagni’s chronicle
an unsurpassed narrative source for the political life of
Florence in the age of Dante.
See also Dante Alighieri; Henry VII of Luxembourg;
Villani, GiovanniFurther Reading
Editions and Translations
Compagni, Dino. Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne’ tempi suoi.
ed. Isidoro Del Lungo. In Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new
ed., Vol. 9, part 2. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1913.
——. Cronica, ed. Gino Luzzatto. Turin: Einaudi, 1968.
——. Cronica, ed. Bruna Cordati, Turin: Loescher, 1969.
Dino Compagni’s Chronicle of Florence, trans. Daniel E. Born-
stein. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
Critical Studies
Arnaldi, Girolamo. “Dino Compagni cronista e militante ‘popo-
lano.’” Cultura, 21, 1983, pp. 37–82.
Cochrane, Eric. History and Historians in the Italian Renais-
sance. Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Green, Louis. Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpreta-
tion of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Lansing, Carol. The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction
in a Medieval Commune. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1991.
Raveggi, Sergio, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici, and Patrizia
Parenti. Ghibellini, Guelfi , e Popolo grasso: I detentori del
potere politico a Firenze nella seconda metà del Dugento.
Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978.
Daniel. E. BornsteinCONRAD II (CA. 990–JUNE 4, 1039)
The fi rst monarch of the new royal dynasty of the Salians,
Conrad (Konrad) II was born circa 990 to Heinrich, son
of Duke Otto of Carinthia and grandson of Duke Con-
rad of Lotharingia (d. 955). After his father’s death, he
was raised by his grandfather and uncle Conrad until
he was taken into the episcopal household of Bishop
Burchard of Worms (1000–d. 1025), supposedly because
of ill-treatment at the hands of his relatives. In 1016,
he married Gisela (d. 1043), daughter of Hermann II of
Bavaria, thereby allying himself with one of the noblest
families in the Reich (empire). The future king Henry III
was born to the couple one year later in 1017.
When King Henry II died childless early in 1024,
the nobility of the Reich was presented with the op-
portunity to elect a new monarch and ruling house. The
royal election, recounted in unusual detail by the royal
biographer and chaplain Wipo, was held at Kamba on
the Rhine on September 4, 1024. Chosen over his rival
and cousin Conrad the Younger (d. 1039), Conrad II was
consecrated and crowned king by Archbishop Aribo of
Mainz on September 8.
Once crowned king, Conrad had to make his king-
ship, his royal presentia, felt throughout his realm by
establishing the personal bonds with local ecclesiastics,
monasteries, and nobles that were the true guarantees of
his kingship’s power and stability. Furthermore, he hadCONRAD II